


A brother, by any other face...

by TerresDeBrume



Series: SEADLA Verse [8]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Brothers, Family, Gen, Introspection, Loyalty, Putting things in perspective, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Treason is only one way to look at it. And in the end, it isn’t so much who you betray that matters, but who you decide to be faithful to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A brother, by any other face...

**Author's Note:**

> So... remember those days Thor disappeared in SEADLA? A little before chapter 9? Yeah, I decided to write a bit about that.
> 
> (And then I got all the Brothers Feels)

_Traitor_.  
  
The word twists and grates at Thor’s soul, ugly and slimy and dark, bitter bile washing the back of his throat every minute of every hour.  
Traitor, the soldier repeats, and Thor’s fingers squeeze his throat, twist it until his face turns black and his eyes bulge out of heir socket and finally -thankfully- he stops talking.  
  
(The flesh of his face melts and shrivels away until it is Odin’s eye staring at Thor’s soul.  
  
He wakes up screaming.)  
  
 _Traitor. Traitor, traitor, traitor._  
  
Thor has tried to escape the word, tried to hide away from it but how can he? Here in this cave with its nameless rooms and rough corridors and its windows full of fishes Thor has never seen before, Jormungandr is the only master, and he is not one to spare his uncle a little suffering… And so the whispers endures, nagging and insistent at all time of night and day.  
  
Traitor, it names him, and well it might, for blood was spilled.  
Thor never had the blood of an Asgardian on his hands before, or at least not so plainly. He has made mistakes in his battle plans, it is true, and men have died because of them. All the same, he has wounded soldiers in training, too enthusiastic in his sparring to control his strength -or too angry at his brother to care… But he never  _meant_  to harm them, never swung Mjölnir with the intent of taking their life.  
  
Yet, for two days now, it is what he has been struggling with. He spilled he blood of Asgard and all that for what? A Frost Giant trying to free Odin’s prisoner? No wonder they called him a traitor! He betrayed his king and his country, and for that Thor thinks he deserves the name he was given.  
He has no idea, still, of what made him do what he did. In any other circumstances, a Jotun in Vanaheim would have been slain on sight, and Thor would have gone to bed with a clean conscience.  
Of course, this one was no ordinary Jotun, the blue of its skin swallowing the pink of fondly remembered and beloved features but even then… Thor could have stood aside. He could have let time run its course and the Jotun, exhausted by the fight against Hermes, would have been caught. A tricked trickster, ensnared and condemned to face Odin Father of All for the crimes he committed against Asgard and Earth both… And Jotunheim, too.  
  
Thor fought instead, fought with a fury he did not know slept inside of him -not he bloodlust of his other battles or the excitement of the training grounds but pure, blinding hatred fast as lightning and fierce as a dragon. Sometimes, one of the soldier’s face would remind him of Odin’s and instead of staying his arm it made him strike harder, and the memory frightens him beyond anything he thought possible.  
  
 _Traitor, traitor, traitor._  
  
A traitor he is then, in truth as well as name. Thor knows this and although it pains him, he has accepted his new condition with all the calm he could muster, but he is not yet at peace with his status, knows he will not be until he understands  _why_.  
  
Maybe it is what brought him to Loki’s door tonight.  
  
Loki is pink when he opens, pink and black of hair and green of eyes, not a drop of Jotun blue on his skin -or is it a sneer hanging at the corner of his nose?  
(Loki looked shocked when Mjölnir zoomed past his head to behead a guard instead, so much so that it took him almost half a mints before he would leave the battlefield and go to retrieve his son from the cave Odin had him imprisoned in.)  
  
“Have you come to correct your mistake?” He asks in a hushed tone, door opened no further than necessary. He doesn’t sound afraid, but when has either of them sounded afraid?  
  
(There was a tower, Thor remembers, and a split moment no longer than the blink of an eye and _‘it’s too late’_  before the cold of a dagger pricked him deep enough to hurt and the moment lay crumbled beneath the rumbles of a world he seems doomed to save from his own kin.)  
  
“I only wish for a word, in private.” Thor opens the fold of his cap to prove he means no harm. “The walls are too thick for me to call upon Mjölnir,” he points out even as he knows Loki doesn’t need him to come to this conclusion.  
“Come in,” he says at last, “but be quiet. Fenrir is asleep.”  
  
Thor follows Loki inside the room he claimed for himself, and the furnishing is so alike to his bedroom in Asgard that Thor is convinced this room has been occupied for much, much longer than Loki has been exiled.  
In the massive bed, covered with bear pelts sewn together, Thor spies a boy with flaming hair and chaffing marks around his mouth and nose… The traces of chains, Thor knows. The child would look six or seven to a human, perhaps eight, but he is still chewing on a gold and green pacifier, skinny frame curled in a tight ball as he whines in his sleep.  
  
“He will bear the scars all his life,” Loki says when he notices Thor’s gaze, “both visible and hidden.”  
  
Slowly, carefully, Loki traces the outline of the marks the muzzle left, moving down to the boy’s neck where a collar bit deep into the flesh. All the while, his other hand rests on his lower belly, the place where a child would grow if be were to be impregnated again.  
  
“What do you want,” he asks without taking his gaze off his son, “if not finish me?”  
  
Thor wasn’t quite sure when he knocked, but now he knows, and so his voice is steady when he asks:  
  
“Change.”  
  
He sees in Loki’s suddenly rigid posture that he does not need to explain what sort of change he means.  
  
“Why?” Loki asks with his ambassador’s voice, “We both know you hate the blue as much as I do.”  
“I did not have a chance to see you back there in Asgard. I want to see you now.  You owe me.”  
  
Loki’s eyes flash with anger, the reddish tint of fire plainly stating it  it was  _Thor_  who owed Fenrir his freedom, not the reverse… Three days ago, Thor would have agreed without question, but now he has seen what lay beneath his brother’s skin, and he doubts.  
Still, Loki does not protest, merely steps well away from the bed and closes his eyes. He is still wearing the traveling tunic he favors when not forced to appear princely, so he change is mostly visible in his hands at first, fingernails blackening as the blue creeps up past his knuckles and ridged lines appear where his red-headed form bears moving tattoos of lined runes. The blue climbs up and up until it bleeds over Loki’s neck, his chin, his cheeks, his forehead… Then he opens his eyes and blood pools in, chasing the green, and Thor’s fingers prickles with Mjölnir’s absence, itching for the heavy feel of a handle he cannot seize.  
Loki sees it and he chuckles, the bitter little laugh that has been his ever since Sleipnir and Fenrir and Angrboda, and Thor can feel his eyes widen in response to this, his mouth to slack.  
  
“Have you had your fill now, Odinson?” Loki asks, and that sounds bitter too, as he did so long ago after countless encounters with father, as he did on the Bifrost and on top of a nameless rock in Midgard. “Have you seen enough of the monster?”  
“No,” Thor says, reaching for Loki’s cheek -Loki flinches away with a look of fear and incredulity, as if to ask if Thor has taken leave of his wits- “I see only a brother I wish to know again.”  
  
Loki doesn’t return his smile, but Thor recognizes the way he pinches his lips easily: he used to wear the same expression when Frigga paid him a compliment he did not know how to handle.  
  
 _Traitor, traitor, traitor_ , the voice in his head keeps saying, but Thor is starting to like the sound of it a lot better.


End file.
